Yesterday brought some interesting news in the cryptocurrency space. In a move that is at once sleazy and ridiculous, PornHub and its tech arm Mindgeek announced a partnership with the creators of VergeCoin (XVG), an anonymized cryptocurrency in the vein of Monero that is currently trading at 7 cents, down from an all-time high of […]
Coverfox, one a handful of companies aiming to digitize insurance in India, has landed fresh funding via a $22 million Series C round that will be used to push into more rural parts of the country. The investment is led by IFC, a sister organization of World Bank, and U.S. insurance firm Transamerica with participation from existing […]
Entrepreneurs know the stress that comes from bootstrapping a tech startup on a shoestring budget — and a frayed one at that. That’s why we’re reminding you that you can still save big bucks on passes to San Francisco Disrupt 2018, which runs from September 5-7. The Super Early Bird price offers up to $1,800 […]
Cybersecurity continues to be a growing focus and problem in the digital world, and now Stripe is launching a new paid product that it hopes will help its customers better battle one of the bigger side-effects of data breaches: online payment fraud. Today, Stripe is announcing Radar for Fraud Teams, an expansion of its free […]
Google’s internal incubator, Area 120, is today releasing its next creation: a learn-to-code mobile app for beginners called Grasshopper. At launch, the app teaches would-be coders how to write JavaScript, via short lessons on their iPhone or Android device. The goal is to get coders proficient in the basics and core concepts, so they can […]
This week Snapchat is rolling out Shoppable AR, a new feature that makes it even easier for advertisers to sell goods through sponsored lenses. The new offering builds on top of the Sponsored Lenses the service rolled out in late-2015, which let advertisers create branded filters, bringing product placements to selfies. Now companies can essentially […]
The first digital media networks have popped up on YouTube TV, with the addition of two new channels from the startup Cheddar. Earlier this month, Digiday had reported how YouTube’s streaming television service, YouTube TV, would soon gain new channels from a variety of digital media publishers, including Cheddar, Tastemade and The Young Turks Network. The […]
YouTube says it’s rolling out more tools to help its creators make money from their videos. The changes are meant to address creators’ complaints over YouTube’s new monetization policies announced earlier this year. Those policies were designed to make the site more advertiser-friendly following a series of controversies over video content from top creators, including […]
Qapital, one of a slew of mobile applications trying to make it easier for users to save money (and spend it more wisely), has raised $30 million in fresh financing as it expands beyond savings to offer investment advisory services. Since its launch in the U.S. in 2015, Qapital has amassed roughly 420,000 users that […]
While many are on the lookout for new, big revamp of Gmail, its smaller competitor Yahoo Mail today jumped in first with its own set of updates, covering both new personalisation features and faster performance times. The changes come about 10 months after Yahoo Mail rolled out its own major redesign, and are an extension […]
As the future of technology continues to give us plenty of things we wish it hadn’t, we’re still managing to get some simple pleasures out of the way. Star Wars Holochess can now be played on the iPhone in your pocket in full augmented reality glory. The game may have only occupied a few seconds […]
Cloud Foundry is among the most successful open source project in the enterprise right now. It’s a cloud-agnostic platform-as-a-service offering that helps businesses develop and run their software more efficiently. In many enterprises, it’s now the standard platform for writing new applications. Indeed, half of the Fortune 500 companies now use it in one form […]
Peris Kimeli and Betsy Cheruyot were students at Kenyatta University thinking about launching a business when they applied for their first loans from the mobile lending company, Tala. Hoping to get a clothing business off the ground and make some money to live on while going to school, the two young Kenyans downloaded the Tala […]
At the Cloud Foundry Summit in Boston, the team behind the U.S. government’s cloud.gov application platform announced that it is now a certified Cloud Foundry platform that is guaranteed to be compatible with other certified providers like Huawei, IBM, Pivotal, SAP and — also starting today — Suse. With this, cloud.gov becomes the first government […]
While smaller companies are seeing a lot of new options for distributed office space, or can pick up a couple offices in a WeWork, eventually they get big enough and have to find a bigger office — but that can end up as one of the weirdest and most annoying challenges for an early-stage CEO. […]
My friend Rick is a voiceover artist and works in Ohio – right along the flight path for jets taking off and landing at the Columbus airport. As a result, he said, he had to record late at night when the airport closed, a limitation that he found exasperating. Enter StudioBricks, a cool startup from […]
Amazon is looking to sell its Fire TV Edition smart televisions in a big box store, but thankfully it’s not Whole Foods. Instead, Amazon will be tapping a retailer whose life it has made incredibly difficult over the years, Best Buy, to begin selling smart televisions with its Fire TV capabilities baked in. The displays […]
Voicera wants to be the company that eliminates the need for human note taking once and for all. Their vision is an AI-driven voice recognition system that not only takes notes, but identifies speakers and summarizes key points and action items. Today, the company announced it had acquired a similar startup, Wrappup, an AI-fueled note […]
If you own any Bitcoin, you’re probably in the habit of watching its price fluctuate wildly. What you aren’t doing is using your Bitcoin to buy things. It’s too valuable, not to mention unpredictable. Enter Basis, a year-old, 10-person, Hoboken, N.J.-based cryptocurrency startup at work on a “stable coin” whose elastic supply will ostensibly expand […]
AJ Brustein was out spending time with a member of his merchandising team when a nearby store ran out of stock of some goods — but there was no one on staff responsible for that location. Fortunately, the employee he was with had already showed him how to restock the shelves, and he offered to […]
How Long Should Your Videos Be? Ideal Lengths for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube [Infographic] This article was originally published on HubSpot. When a video pops up on your Facebook feed, what do you usually do first? My guess is that you take a peek at its length, ponder whether it’s worth your time, […]
There’s good news for Google Chrome users, the latest version of the world’s most popular web browser has arrived with a new feature that prevents websites from automatically playing sound. That means that pre-loaded videos, and other content that involves sound, won’t blare out unless you specifically choose to enable it to. Aside from being […]
As fast-growing companies — or, dare I say, ‘scale-ups’ — add new headcount, the pace at which they are able to on-board new hires doesn’t always keep up. In fact, I’m told it is not unheard of for new employees to turn up on day one apparently unexpected, and to be passed from pillar to […]
Ford is launching an on-demand transportation service for non-emergency medical needs. The idea is to better help patients get to their doctor appointments. Ford is initially launching this in partnership with Beaumont Health in Michigan to serve more than 200 facilities. Called GoRide, the fleet has 15 transit vans to accommodate people with varying needs. […]
Asking for a promotion can be nerve-wracking. But when you think you’re ready for the next step in your career, it’s important to say so. To prepare for the conversation with your boss, reflect on what you want. Would you like to move up, or might a lateral move interest you? Next, do some research. […]
Funding Societies co-founders Reynold Wijaya and Kelvin Teo. Funding Societies, a peer-to-peer lending platform in Southeast Asia, said today that it has raised a $25 million Series B led by Softbank Ventures Korea, the Japanese tech conglomerate’s early-stage venture capital unit. The round included returning investors Sequoia India, which led the Singapore-based startup’s Series A […]
Keeping The Creative Juices Flowing at Home: A Creative Homebody’s Guide to Staying Inspired 1. Create Playlists for Every Type of Mood Having playlists for every type of mood can set the tone for whatever output you’re creating. Instead of playing songs on shuffle, curate mood playlists that flow well. 2. Immerse Yourself […]
The Coinbase hiring spree continues. In the last week and a half, the company has picked up a new CTO, a new VP of communications, a global head of inclusion and now a new CFO. In a blog post today, the company announced the addition of Alesia Haas, who joins the team from New York-based […]
All of the procrastinating Pollys and Peters who waited til the last minute to file their taxes can breathe a sigh of relief. Thanks to today’s outage of direct payment systems at the Internal Revenue Service, folks are getting another day to get those taxes in. The IRS is now saying that people can submit […]
As cryptocurrencies continued shaking off their April hangover, the state of New York is trying to figure out what to do with this whole coin thing. On Tuesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced something called the Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative, a state-level effort to examine the policies and practices of the major cryptocurrency […]
GoldieBlox, a startup looking to get girls hooked on engineering and other STEM fields, has hired Shawn Dennis as its first president. Dennis was most recently the head of brand and franchise development at DreamWorks Animation and also worked as the chief marketing officer at Mattel’s American Girl. She’s also been on the GoldieBlox board […]
Gené Teare Contributor More posts by this contributor Unicorns gorge as investors dish up bigger rounds, more capital The portion of VC-backed startups founded by women stays stubbornly stagnant In this report, we look at venture and seed investment trends in female-founded startups over the last five quarters. For this time period, we look at […]
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted today to approve the ordinance that looks to regulate electric scooters in San Francisco. The ordinance seeks to establish regulation and a permitting process that would enable the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency or Department of Public Works to take action against scooters from companies that don’t […]
Tesla is about to ramp up production of the Model 3 sedan according to an email obtained by Jalopnik. The company shut down the sedan’s production line this week, but this email says the line will soon be running and a third shift will be added allowing the sedan to be built around the clock. […]
Twitter’s brief morning outage was stressful enough — but those who’ve waited until the last possible moment to pay their tax bills have a much more distressing site crash to worry about. The Internal Revenue Service’s Direct pay site is down the day taxes are due. It’s been experiencing issues for a number of hours […]
General Motors is spinning up its electrification plans and today announced the stunning, poorly-named Buick Enspire concept at Auto China 2018. As a concepts go, this one looks great and rather feasible. GM says its powered by Buick’s eMotion powertrain that can produce a maximum output of 410 kW (roughly 550 hp). This should make […]
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Arrington XRP Capital founder (and TechCrunch founder) Michael Arrington will be joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September to talk money. Garlinghouse has had a long and storied career in the tech industry, serving as a Senior Vice President at Yahoo!, President of Consumer Applications at AOL, and CEO […]
Christoph Auer-Welsbach Contributor Christoph Auer-Welsbach is an experienced founder, investor and product manager active in the fields of artificial intelligence, blockchain, IoT and web/mobile. He is the co-founder of the global applied AI community City.AI. This year, artificial intelligence will further elevate the enterprise by transforming the way we work, securing digital assets, increasing collaboration […]
Amazon has quietly launched an Android web browser app for emerging markets, where access to mobile data and high-speed connectivity is more limited. The browser has the rather generic name of: “Internet: fast, lite and private” on Google Play, and promises to be “lighter than the competition.” The app first appeared on the Play Store […]
Amazon is developing a series based on William Gibson’s science fiction novel The Peripheral. Variety reports that the series is being considered for a straight-to-series order, with Scott B. Smith writing and executive producing, and Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan (creators of the HBO remake of Westworld) also signed on as executive producers. Amazon seems […]
Justin Kan is qualified to teach you how to pitch, and isn’t shy about it. Having raised about $90 million for a few companies and sold his startup Twitch to Amazon for almost a billion dollars, not being shy is actually part of what Kan teaches. His legal services startup Atrium today officially launches Atrium […]
At the end of last year, Snap introduced Lens Studio, a platform that allows developers to create AR lenses for Snapchat. Today, the company is announcing new features for Lens Studio, including seven brand new templates for the creation of face lenses. Before now, only World Lens creation was available to everyone within Lens Studio, […]
Hardware isn’t easy — especially if you decline to take advantage of the global manufacturing infrastructure, build everything in a flat in London, and use only local labor and materials. But that’s what the creators of successful Kickstarter project Moon did, and they have no regrets. Back in 2016, I got a pitch for the […]
It’s been about 6 years since Boosted first showed up with its electric longboard and its oh-so-orange wheels, but the company is back with the next logical step: a cheaper, shorter board. The company is also revamping its longboards, with two new models on the way in the coming months. The Shortboards First up, the […]
I’ll be helping build a larger meetup focused on pre-ICO companies in New York on April 23 and I’d love to see you there. It will be held at Knotel on April 23 at 7pm and will feature a pitch-off with eight startups – I will write about the best ones – and two panels […]
Startups like Zillow and Trulia have reshaped the real estate market by giving consumers with their 24-hour covetable, clickable window into shoppable home sales — and the other players in the real estate marketplace are struggling to catch up. This deluge of leads coming in to real estate agencies across the country from online sources […]
The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has teamed up with the University of Minnesota to explore the wonders of soft robots. The teams have published a study describing their findings as they look to build invertebrate-inspired robotics able to squeeze into and maneuver around obstacles. “Successful stealthy maneuvering requires high structural flexibility and distributive control to […]
Elon Musk, CEO of multiple companies and part of the PayPal mafia, is worth around $20 billion dollars. He doesn’t need a handout. But that didn’t stopped over 72 people from donating money on GoFundMe to buy the man a new couch. As of publication, over $1000 was raised to gift Musk a better couch, […]
It probably goes without saying that 3D printing is going to be a mainstay for the next generation of spacecrafts. The technology has already made its way onto extra terrestrial objects, and this morning 3D printing bigwig Stratasys confirmed that it’s teaming with Lockheed Martin to create parts for the Orion. The parts, the company […]
According to Parsley Health, the average adult spends 19 minutes with their physician every year. Seventy percent of the time, these short visits result in the prescription of a medication. “According to the CDC, 70% of diseases in our country are chronic and lifestyle-driven,” said Parsley Health founder and CEO Dr. Robin Berzin. “And yet […]
Building conversational interfaces is a hot new area for developers. Chatbots can be a way to reduce friction in websites and apps and to give customers quick answers to commonly asked questions in a conversational framework. Today, Google announced it was making Dialogflow Enterprise Edition generally available. It had previously been in Beta. This technology […]
TechCrunch is poised to break through the huge noise surrounding blockchain with a new event. Zug, the Swiss Canton just outside of Zurich, has come to be known as “Crypto Valley” because it’s become a regulatory haven where startups are increasingly filing their Initial Coin Offerings. It’s also turned into a place where Blockchain startups […]
In November, we told you about Farmers Business Network, a social network for farmers that invites them to share their data, pool their know-how, and bargain more effectively for better pricing from manufacturing companies. At the time, FBN, as it’s known, had just closed on $110 million in new funding in a round that brought […]
Reports of Twitter being down are coming in from across the global. The homepage and mobile app is currently down. The desktop API still works so users can connect to the service through apps like Tweetdeck and Tweetbot. According to downdetector.com, users are experience an outage across the world. The issue appeared at 9:50 AM EDT. […]
While chatbots might sound like an interesting experiment for restaurants and other small businesses, they probably can’t devote much time or money to building them. So a startup called GuestFriend is planning to make the process as fast and easy as possible. The company has raised $5 million in seed funding from Primary Venture Partners, […]
Huawei is readjusting its approach the the U.S. In an annual meeting in Shenzhen, the company asserted its commitment on existing customers and markets. It’s a shift in focus for a company that has been aggressively targeting new territories, looking to expand its position as the world’s third largest smartphone manufacturer. It’s understandable, of course. […]
Carvana is already an innovative way to shop for a car and it could get better thanks to Car360. The two companies share an interest in improving the car buying experience through enhanced imagery. Car360’s approach is different from Carvana’s as it’s focused on photos shot with a mobile device. This approach could allow Carvana to […]
More details are out this morning about Apple’s plans for Texture, the digital newsstand business it acquired last month. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple is planning to launch its own premium news subscription service in an upgraded version of the Apple News app, arriving sometime in the next year. The service will […]
In 2015, the fashion world was abuzz when Natalie Massenet, who founded the highly disruptive e-commerce fashion company Net-a-Porter, suddenly exited the scene weeks before a merger was sealed between NAP, as it is called, and Yoox, an Italy-based discount fashion e-tailer and e-commerce services company. According to an expose written soon afterward, Massenet left […]
Resy launched in the summer of 2014 with a simple premise: If you want a premium reservation at a restaurant on short notice, you should be able to pay for it. Four years and 160 markets later, Resy has changed a lot since then. But today, the company is about to change things up even […]
The mayor of Los Angeles confirmed earlier reports that SpaceX will build its largest rocket, the BFR, at the Port of Los Angeles. The company intends to build a manufacturing facility on an 18-acre site at Berth 240 and use waterways to transport the massive rocket. SpaceX says the BFR is simply too big to […]
When you’re raising venture capital, it helps if you’ve had “exits.” In other words, if your company has been acquired or you’ve taken one public, investors are more inclined to take a bet on anything you do. Boston-based serial entrepreneur David Cancel has sold not just one, but four companies. And after a few years running […]
For a communications platform like Twilio, getting into wireless always seemed like a logical next move and a year ago, the company did just that with the beta launch of its SIM-based Programmable Wireless service for IoT. Now, a year later, the company is taking this service out of beta and making it generally available. […]
Spinnaker is the new open-source project to watch. It’s a multi-cloud continuous delivery platform that came out of Netflix and that now also has the backing of Google. The typical cycle for these kind of products, which mirrors what we’ve seen with projects like Kubernetes or OpenStack, is that a few companies will back the […]
Node, an AI-driven search tool designed to surface the information that matters most to you, announced today that it was bringing on a couple of AI research heavy hitters. It also announced $5 million in additional funding. For starters, the company hired Louis Mornier, one of the founders of early internet search engine, Alta Vista, and […]
Can Artificial Intelligence replace lawyers? Perhaps sometime in the distant future, but in the meantime AI is already augmenting the work done by legal professionals as startups race to reach that ultimate goal. One burgeoning player in the AI-powered legal tech space is Tel Aviv-based LawGeex, which has developed automated contract review technology to help […]
Ensuring equal pay is an ongoing task, Salesforce has found. In the past year, Salesforce spent $2.7 million to address pay discrepancies across gender worldwide and race in the U.S. Where Salesforce is making progress is in the number of people affected by unequal pay. Last year, Salesforce made pay adjustments (salaries and bonuses) for […]
Harbor helps businesses legally issue cryptocurrency tokens that represent ownership of real-world assets like real estate, fine art, company equity, and investment funds. This “tokenization” might sound boring, but it could be a big business that unlocks trading of illiquid property. Harbor’s intention to become a fundamental bridge between the offline and crypto economies has […]
Lingumi, the London and Cardiff-based edtech startup that teaches English to kids aged between 2 and 6 using an app and a range of physical products, has picked up £1.2 million in seed funding. Leading the round is ADV, with participation from existing backers LocalGlobe, and company builder Entrepreneur First (Lingumi was part of EF’s […]
Computational design is the hottest phrase in manufacturing and 3D printing at the moment. It’s changing the way people make all kinds of goods, and Nike used it to design and manufacture its new Vaporfly Elite FlyPrint shoe, which it’s announcing today. The shoe is a specialized edition of its Zoom Vaporfly Elite 4%, which was […]
Kdan Mobile founder and CEO Kenny Su Kdan Mobile, a Taiwanese startup that makes cloud-based software for content creators, announced a $5 million Series A today, raised from investors including W.I. Harper Group, Darwin Venture Management and Accord Ventures. Founded in 2009, the Tainan City startup says its products have been downloaded more 120 million […]
We all want to work in a place where people treat each other with kindness and respect. But you can’t expect your team to behave that way without making it clear that you want them to. This process starts when you interview potential team members: Tell candidates that your team values civility, so they can […]
TaskRabbit, the on-demand errand service acquired by IKEA last year, announced today that has taken its website and app offline while investigating a “cybersecurity incident.” The company also said that people who use the same password on TaskRabbit as for other services should change them immediately as a precaution. “We understand how important your personal […]
Whenever a company may be guilty of something, from petty neglect to grand deception, there’s usually a class action lawsuit filed. But until a judge rules that lawsuit legitimate, the threat remains fairly empty. Unfortunately for Facebook, one major suit from 2015 has just been given that critical go-ahead. The case concerns an Illinois law […]
[embedded content] With the debut of his Eminem Augmented app at Coachella last night, hip hop’s not-so-merry prankster took the (somewhat revolutionary) step of embracing the machine that so many musicians have raged against — by building an experience that actually enhances the way that modern fans see live music. Rather than fighting the mobile phone […]
Tesla has paused the production of Model 3, Buzzfeed first reported. However, this seems to be part of Tesla’s planned downtime for Model 3. “Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory 1,” a Tesla spokesperson said back in February and again today to TechCrunch. “These periods are […]
Research into machine learning and the interesting AI models created as a consequence are popular topics these days. But there’s a sort of shadow world of scientists working to undermine these systems — not to show they’re worthless but to shore up their weaknesses. A new paper demonstrates this by showing how vulnerable image recognition […]
UK VCs were sent a message today by the EU: Continue to invest in European companies and we’ll invest in you. That at least seems to be the takeaway from the news that Dawn Capital, which has built up a reputation as an investor in early-stage SaaS and Fintech businesses in the UK and Europe, […]
Adobe today announced that it has acquired Sayspring, a startup that helps developers prototype and build the voice interfaces for their Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant apps. The company says the Sayspring team will join Adobe tomorrow and that it’ll then start integrating the company’s technology into its own products. All of Saysprings services are […]
It’s not often that you hear many details about the limited partners that feed money into a venture capital fund, and even less so when it’s about Western money being channelled into Chinese VCs, but today comes news of how one of the more interesting funds out of China is shaping up, courtesy of a […]
At a small press event in San Francisco, Microsoft today announced the launch of a secure end-to-end IoT product that focuses on microcontroller-based devices — the kind of devices that use tiny and relatively low-powered microcontrollers (MCUs) for basic control or connectivity features. Typically, these kinds of devices, which could be anything from a toy […]
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bird, Lime and Spin for operating their shared electric scooter programs in San Francisco, the SF Examiner first reported. “We have just received it and we are reviewing it,” Bird spokesperson Rachel Katz told TechCrunch. “We’ll be in touch when we have more […]
Elon Musk’s tunneling startup The Boring Company has raised $113 million to fund its vision of the near/distant future of transportation, according to newly-filed SEC docs first spotted by CNBC. The startup, which is centered around the goal of creating underground tunnels, plays a central part in Musk’s integrated view of urban transportation that he […]
The cryptocurrency world is a strange one, but at least it has a sense of humor. A new game has you riding a little crypto-car along the wildly fluctuating prices of major and minor currencies. It’s quite ridiculous, and it isn’t even a bad game! It’s called Crypto Rider, predictably, and is very much a […]
Pluralsight, the Utah-based education technology company, has revealed its IPO filing. Given the timing of the unveiling, the company is likely targeting a May public debut. Its core business is online software development courses, helping people improve their skills in categories like IT, data and security. Businesses small and large pay Pluralsight to help train their […]
Indiana Jones’ exclamation of, “It belongs in a museum!” is taking a trip into the digital age with a Google initiative that will save archaeological sites to the cloud. Google’s non-profit Arts and Culture arm is partnering with another non-profit, Oakland-based CyArk, which flies drones and sets up cameras around historical sites using photogrammetry and LiDAR […]
Just last quarter Netflix passed a $100 billion market cap — and we might already be talking about it as a $150 billion company before too long with yet another big financial quarter that sent its stock soaring. Netflix, again, beat out some expectations Wall Street held for the first quarter and provided a pretty […]
Just in time for the annual RSA conference in San Francisco, Microsoft today announced a number of new security tools for its business users that range from new tools to prevent phishing attacks to a new service that only allows you to access certain online services if your device also has a clean bill of […]
Last week, Yubico, the company behind the popular YubiKey USB authentication dongles, announced the launch of its $20 Security Key with support for the FIDO2/WebAuthn standard. With a bit of luck, FIDO2 may just herald the end of passwords and, as the company announced today, Microsoft is putting its weight behind this by announcing upcoming support […]
“The percentage of Top 40 music made with our platform blows my mind” says Splice co-founder Steve Martocci. He tells me about some bedroom music producers who were “working at Olive Garden until they put sounds on Splice.” Soon they quit their jobs since they were earning enough from artists downloading those sounds to use […]
Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributor What does it take to be a startup that raises huge sums quickly? Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items The global early-stage investment pie is getting bigger… a lot bigger. Just four years ago, investors were putting less than $10 billion […]
T-Mobile will pay $40 million as part of a settlement with the FCC for playing ringing sounds to mislead customers into thinking their calls were going through when in fact they had never connected in the first place. The company admitted it had done so “hundreds of millions” of times over the years. The issue […]
Monzy Merza Contributor Monzy Merza is the chief security evangelist at Splunk. More posts by this contributor The four cybersecurity terms everyone is talking about at Black Hat This week, 50,000 security professionals will descend upon San Francisco for the 27th Annual RSA Security Conference, arguably the largest global security event of the year. And for […]
Some folks I met in Chicago are holding an amazing event at a great place on South Canalport Avenue. This former macaroni factory now builds startups and I’ll be helping judge their pitch-off alongside some Chicago luminaries. You can RSVP here and sign up for a spot to pitch here. They’ll choose eight startups to […]
Target wants to make it easier for customers in urban markets to shop its store and get their hauls home, without having to lug their bags onto the subway or other public transit. These customers may skip buying heavier items like 12-packs of soda, big bags of dog food, gallons of water, new bedding sets, […]
Coinbase, the prominent cryptocurrency exchange, has announced its most significant piece of M&A to date after it agreed to buy Earn.com, the U.S. startup that uses the blockchain for its paid-email service, in a deal worth over $120 million. In additional, Coinbase has appointed Earn.com co-founder and CEO Balaji Srinivasan as its first CTO, while […]
Lyft drivers have earned more than $500 million in tips to date, Lyft announced today. Since fleshing out tip functionality last June to encourage higher tip amounts, tip averages increased by nearly 8 percent in 2017 compared to 2016. While it took four years for Lyft to reach $100 million in tips for its drivers, […]
SpaceX is set to launch a Falcon 9 rocket today during a 30 second window at 6:32pm EDT. Onboard is NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) designed to find exoplanets. SpaceX said this morning there’s an 80 percent chance of launching today. Following the launch, SpaceX will attempt to recover the Falcon 9 rocket and […]
Domino’s will now deliver your pizza to the beach – well, sort of! Or the park, the sports field, that one gas station down the road, or some notable landmark in your city where it will be easy for your delivery driver to find you, among other places. The company announced today the launch of […]
Porsche is planning a Supercharger-like network of fast charging stations at dealerships and highway locations across the US. There will be at least 500 by the end of 2019 according to Klaus Zellmer, CEO of Porsche Cars North America, speaking to Automotive News. The timing coincides with the launch of its Mission E electric vehicle […]
A new update is bringing an improved user interface to older Tesla vehicles. According to this report citing forum users, the v8.1 (2018.12) update improves the speed and capability in Model S and Model X vehicles equipped with an Nvidia Tegra 3-powered MCU. This was expected; Musk stated in late December 2017 that Tesla was […]
There’s a new world of lab-grown replacements coming for everything from the meat department in your grocery store to a department store near you. Lab-made leather replacements will soon join vegetable-based meat replacements on store shelves thanks to startups like Bolt Threads, which today announced that it would join companies like Modern Meadow in the […]
This time last year, Chinese electronics giant ZTE pled guilty to violating sanctions on Iran and North Korea. This morning, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced a seven-year export restriction for the company, resulting in a ban on U.S. component makers selling to ZTE. The company’s initial guilty plea was met with up to $1.2 billion […]
Elon Musk took to Twitter Sunday night to announce a new recovery method for an upper stage SpaceX rocket. A balloon — a “giant party balloon” to quote him directly — will ferry part of a rocket to a bounce house. Seriously. If anyone else proposed this idea they would be ignored, but Elon Musk […]
We’ve all probably heard of containers and virtual machines by now. Virtualization enabled IT to break down a single server into multiple machines. Containers allowed you take that concept and make it even smaller. DeferPanic wants to take another step with a technology called Unikernels. Today, the company announced its $1.5 million seed round. The […]
This weekend, former Apple engineer and consumer gadget legend Tony Fadell penned an op-ed for Wired. In it, he argued that smartphone manufacturers need to do a better job of educating users about how often they use their mobile phones, and the resulting dangers that overuse might bring about. Take healthy eating as an analogy: […]
Just like Nintendo before it, Sega is releasing a mini version of its iconic Mega Drive game system. The system is supposed to be available sometime in 2018 and the company also announced at least 15 classic Sega games will hit the Switch this summer to celebrate the system’s 30th anniversary. Sega turned to AtGames […]
Mixcloud, the London startup that offers an audio streaming platform designed for long-form content, has closed its first-ever funding round, TechCrunch has learned. According to a regulatory filing and since confirmed by co-founder Nico Perez, the ten-year old company has raised approximately $11.5 million led by WndrCo, the media and technology holding company based in […]
More devices are coming onto the Internet every single day, and that’s especially true within organizations that have a fleet of devices with access to sensitive data — which means there are even more holes for potential security breaches. That’s the goal of Kolide. The aim is to ensure that companies have access to tools […]
Peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace Turo has officially closed a $104 million Series D round. This comes following a $12 million investment from Sumitomo Corporation and American Express Ventures, on top of a $92 million raise earlier this year. “As a company that is intensely focused on enabling its customers to have unique travel experiences, American Express’ […]
Carpooling app Scoop, which recently raised $10 million in funding, is expanding into its fourth market, Portland. Scoop is a corporate carpooling service that works with companies like LinkedIn, Workday, T-Mobile and Symantec. In conjunction with its launch in Portland, Scoop is bringing on Oregon Health Science University as a customer. “OHSU is continually striving […]
This week on Technotopia I talked to Osama Hashmi, founder of Mocha 7 and a deep thinker on the topics of AI, blockchain, and the future. Hashmi was a bit of a downer in my optimistic view of the future but he had plenty to say, especially on the topic of human growth and improvement. […]
Danish understatement meets Mountain View tech John Biggs 7 hours Skagen is a well-know maker of thin and uniquely Danish watches. Founded in 1989, the company is now part of the Fossil group and, as such, has begin dabbling in both the analog with the Hagen and now Android Wear with the Falster. The Falster […]
The European human resources services company Adecco Group said that is acquiring the New York-based, programming, design, and management training startup General Assembly for $413 million. With the acquisition, Adecco adds to its ability to provide job training and re-skilling services for businesses. It’s proof that General Assembly’s own business has come a long way […]
You know the feeling when things get tense in a meeting. People raise their voices, or your colleagues talk over each other — and you just want it to end. Instead of watching the clock, take action and help get the conversation back on track. First, point out what’s happening in a matter-of-fact way, without […]
Ola announced today that it will add 10,000 electric auto-rickshaws to its fleet in India over the next 12 months. The program, called “Mission: Electric,” is part of its ambitious plan to put one million electric vehicles on the road by 2021. The company launched a trial EV program last year in the city of […]
Last October, TechCrunch launched Startup Battlefield Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, where Lori Systems, SynCommerce & AgroCenta, were among the judges top picks. This week, TechCrunch is headed back to Africa to checkout the amazing startups taking root for our global Startup Battlefield competitions. Startup Battlefield at Disrupt in San Francisco September 5-7th is now open, […]
The TechCrunch Tel Aviv conference on mobility is in June and we’re excited to announce that Raj Kapoor, the Chief Strategy Officer for Lyft, will be joining as a speaker. TechCrunch Tel Aviv will focus on mobility and all that it implies, such as autonomous vehicles, drones, you name it. As well as being the […]
Real estate platform Zillow changed up its business model this week, announcing that it plans to purchase and sell homes in Las Vegas and Phoenix. Zillow will be working with Berkshire Hathaway and Coldwell Banker to make offers on homes before it finds a buyer. Zillow will pay commissions and also “make necessary repairs and updates and […]
There’s big news in the world of advertising. Sir Martin Sorrell has stepped down from WPP, the world’s largest ad business. Sorrell had been in the midst of an unspecified investigation about “personal misconduct and misuse of company assets.” He has denied the allegations. WPP provided us with the following statement. “Sir Martin Sorrell has stepped […]
Some of the most exciting space news of the past few years has been about Earth-like exoplanets that could one day (or perhaps already do) support life. TESS, a space telescope set to launch Monday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, will scan the sky for exoplanets faster and better than any existing platforms, expanding […]
While the vagaries of the cryptocurrency markets are keeping crypto traders glued to their CoinDesk graphs, the real potential of blockchain is its capability to solve real human challenges in a decentralized, private, and secure way. Government officials have increasingly investigated how blockchain might solve critical problems, but now one city intends to move forward […]
You find robotics in unexpected corners of Playground Global’s Palo Alto headquarters. They’re in the lobby and scattered amongst the cubicles. Inside the venture fund’s labs, an older Spot Mini stands next to RightHand Robotics’ pick and place mechanical arm. A recent video shoot in the space shows Boston Dynamics’ latest creation meeting Playground-funded bipedal […]
Facebook is rolling out a redesigned bookmarks section in its app that will make it easier to navigate and access various Facebook settings – including Account Settings, Privacy Shortcuts, News Feed Preferences, Activity Log, Payments Settings, access to Help & Support, and more. None of the options in the updated menu are new to Facebook. […]
Grab’s plan to shutter Uber’s app quickly following its merger deal in Southeast Asia has hit another snag in Singapore where the ride-hailing firm has been forced to delay closing its rival’s service until May 7. This is the second time that Grab has pushed back the removal of Uber’s app in Singapore, which was initially […]
Waymo has become the second company to apply for the newly-available permit to deploy autonomous vehicles without safety drivers on some California roads, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. It would be putting its cars — well, minivans — on streets around Mountain View, where it already has an abundance of data. The company already has […]
Today’s blog post kicks off a brand new series focused around the most deceptively complicated question in email sending: “Why is my email going to spam?” We’ll start the series with an exploration on why that question is insanely complicated, then in a couple weeks we’ll dig into some reasons things might be going wrong […]
